Cuba

19 Pages 4682 Words

with Spain that increased Cuban sugar exports to the United States. This newly opened market increased Cuban dependency on the U.S. market and supported continuing increases in Cuba's sugar production capacity. However, in 1894, the Congress reversed itself and reinstated the tariffs on sugar. The economic whiplash effect of the rapidly changing U.S. sugar policies devastated the Cuban economy and led to the economic and social upheavals that set the stage for twentieth-century Cuba and the end of Spanish dominance.

The last four years of this period, 1895-98, were those of greatest political and social upheaval. In 1895, José Martí and Cuban rebels renewed their efforts to make Cuba "economically viable and politically independent" with the Cuban War for Independence. Martí's philosophy that "[a] people economically enslaved but politically free will end by losing all freedom, but a people economically free can go on to win its political independence." They killed Martí in the revolution but he left a martyr's legacy to modern Cuba. A...